“I’ve always been the kid who wanted to make her dad proud,” says Yana Tamba, fighting back tears. The publication of her first book, Twist of Fate, did the trick.

Tamba is a Neumann alumna, who graduated in 2004 with a degree in biological sciences and soon abandoned the career path dictated by her major. Among other jobs, she worked as an Uber driver and an English teacher in South Korea. Today, she is an Instagram influencer, addressing topics from travel and fashion to make-up and hairstyles.

“The tech boom changed my life,” she admits.

It was not her last epiphany. She tells the tale of waking up at 4 a.m. one morning in 2021 and hearing a voice. The message was a clear, one-word order: “Write.” When she heard it again at 4:15, she woke up and began writing, almost “in a trance.” She wrote until it was time for work, kept writing the next morning and the next. “God wants me to tell this story,” she concluded.

The story is the tale of her father and mother, Myfee and Lara. The Black man from Liberia and white woman from Russia met at school in the former U.S.S.R., fell in love, settled in Liberia, and endured a harrowing escape when bloody civil war erupted there.

Twist of Fate captures in detail the joys of the relationship and ordinary family life as well as the agony of a multi-racial couple trapped in a war-torn country. The author, 41, is her parents’ oldest child and was a youngster with them in Liberia.

By the time the whole family arrived in America, Tamba was 12. The book’s narrative ends there. Even in New Jersey, however, the family faced challenges that were similar to those they encountered in Russia and Liberia. She recalls facing financial struggles (her father arrived in the U.S. with $100 in his pocket) and an unusual form of racial stereotyping.

The fact that she and her three sisters have different skin shades became an issue. Tamba describes herself as brown. Her older half-sister Sia is dark, Christina is white with blonde hair and green eyes, and Rita is olive-toned. People didn’t know what to make of the family. “In Africa, no one paid attention to such things,” says Tamba.

The creative process took three years. Tamba conducted countless interviews with her parents about their past experiences and traveled to Liberia with her father in 2021 to visit some of the significant locations in their life. She hired a professional editor to review her writing and self-published Twist of Fate on Amazon in April of 2024.

She recently completed a book tour to Tanzania, South Africa, and Namibia and in early July posted a brief video about her story on TikTok.

When she walked away from a career in the health sciences to follow her dream, she confesses: “I think I saw a bit of disappointment in my dad.”

Tamba never wanted to study medicine but explains that “In the African culture, what the elders say is what you do.” She actually wanted to study law, but her Aunt Etta dissuaded her with a scathing comment: “I don’t want a professional liar in my family.”

The publication of Tamba’s book, however, achieved her goal. She describes her father as “rigid, stern, and slow to show emotion.” That reserved facade melted when he held Twist of Fate in his hands.

“I am so proud of you,” he said to his daughter.